Punching. Every real fight ever in the history of the universe has used punches. Palm heels are a great way to overextend your wrist if you miss, and a great way to hit someone with no power and slap them in the face if you haven't trained it for a long time. In the one real fight I had, I punched a guy in the face hard enough to knock him down and my knuckles didn't even feel sore, much less broken. And if you do break your knuckles, so what? if you hit someone that hard, they're either unconscious, meaning you won, you only go for punches to the top of the skull, or you have osteoporosis.

Palm strikes are easy to learn, heavy blows. They work well at closer ranges than people generally learn to punch initially and, even once skills to alter the range at which a punch delivers its peak power are developed, can be fairly useful in exploiting angles that would be awkward for elbows and striking targets that would be potentially harmful to knuckles.

They're also good for situations in which fists and elbows would be socially unacceptable. You palm strike the neighbour's kid when he's getting uppity and he goes flying, he just looks like a bit of a sissy that got pushed away. You rock him back with a punch, you're potentially in a lot of trouble.

Whether they're preferable to punches and elbows depends to a great extent on what you're trying to accomplish. If you want to stand out there and box with the guy then you're probably not going to get much use out of them. If you've got his head beside your hand on the other ... hand ... you may as well go and slam the thing in. If you've got some percentage in not overtly fighting someone....

I'm not going to go ahead and declare on the best because so much of it does depend on what you're trying to do and why. But it is a nice tool to have when you're managing violent situations. It takes hardly any time to get it, you're not gonna **** your hands up doing it, it gives you more options socially and physically. So, you may as well spend the hour or so picking it up. I don't see why anyone wouldn't want to have it available.

Originally Posted by Moldy

Every real fight ever in the history of the universe has used punches.

Exclusively? That's a rather incredible claim.

Originally Posted by Moldy

Palm heels are a great way to overextend your wrist if you miss,

I can think of a couple of ways that would be true (you run it into someone's chin at a really odd angle / you run it into their guard and have already shaped your hand for the strike rather than doing it when you're within touch range of their body) but they both seem fairly unlikely / stupid. How are you picturing it being used and going wrong?

Originally Posted by Moldy

and a great way to hit someone with no power and slap them in the face if you haven't trained it for a long time.

Stand by this wall. Barge your shoulder into this wall. Step in to barge your shoulder into this wall.... Now do that and hold your arm like this and as you step in flick your palm forward like this. Alright - got that? Now let's get up on the pads.

It doesn't take long to teach people, it's something we do most of the movement for more or less every time we open a door. You just teach them to stick their bodyweight behind it. There are a fair few refinements you can play with, and you'll have to get them moving around with it, but you can teach them to throw something heavy at a reasonable speed in a few minutes.

Originally Posted by Moldy

And if you do break your knuckles, so what?

I need my hands for my job, if I cant work for weeks because my hands are screwed, then I've lost thousands of pounds. Not to mention all the fun I get out of my hands anyway. Protecting your hands is kind of important.

Protecting yourself legally is, perhaps, even more important. You can get away with an awful lot if it looks like you never made a fist. He was backing away, he had his hands open in the air, he said he was leaving, the other guy took a swing at him and he just pushed him away.

It also helps you can graduate your response if you're just telling some little twit to sit down and stop playing silly buggers. You put your hand against someone and just tap them with a light palm strike so it steps them back a bit it's a lot less troublesome than if you make a fist and tap them that way.

Every real fight ever in the history of the universe has used punches.

Exclusively? That's a rather incredible claim.

It would be, if that's what he wrote.

Originally Posted by Moldy

Punching. Every real fight ever in the history of the universe has used punches. Palm heels are a great way to overextend your wrist if you miss, and a great way to hit someone with no power and slap them in the face if you haven't trained it for a long time. In the one real fight I had, I punched a guy in the face hard enough to knock him down and my knuckles didn't even feel sore, much less broken. And if you do break your knuckles, so what? if you hit someone that hard, they're either unconscious, meaning you won, you only go for punches to the top of the skull, or you have osteoporosis.

'Every fight ever in the history of the universe' (!) Is rather extreme language. If he means something other than exclusively, it forms a much weaker argument that doesn't fit with the tone of what he wrote.

Really, even if he didn't mean it exclusively it's still bullshit. I've seen many a fight that consisted of grabbing and a kick or an elbow, or just someone pulling a superior weapon and smacking someone with it.

You can either be useful and explain how what he wrote supports a different interpretation, or I'm just going to write you off as an idiot with no understanding of subtext.

I suppose I may as well add this incase you're really stupid:
We both know what he really meant is liable to be, 'a lot of fights,' and that he got carried away while saying how many fights there were. And we both ought to know, though you are apparently ignorant of this (otherwise we wouldn't be talking at all), that questioning it is inviting someone to back down from, qualify, strengthen, or elaborate on their claim. With the implication that the other party does not consider it strong already.

Which of course I don't. Most people fight like a monkey flinging ****.

He doesn't literally mean every fight and I don't really care about that. But he answered in hyperbole and I'm answering hyperbole by similar measure.

'Every fight ever in the history of the universe' (!) Is rather extreme language. If he means something other than exclusively, it forms a much weaker argument that doesn't fit with the tone of what he wrote.

Really, even if he didn't mean it exclusively it's still bullshit. I've seen many a fight that consisted of grabbing and a kick or an elbow, or just someone pulling a superior weapon and smacking someone with it.

You can either be useful and explain how what he wrote supports a different interpretation, or I'm just going to write you off as an idiot with no understanding of subtext.

I suppose I may as well add this incase you're really stupid:
We both know what he really meant is liable to be, 'a lot of fights,' and that he got carried away while saying how many fights there were. And we both ought to know, though you are apparently ignorant of this (otherwise we wouldn't be talking at all), that questioning it is inviting someone to back down from, qualify, strengthen, or elaborate on their claim. With the implication that the other party does not consider it strong already.

Which of course I don't. Most people fight like a monkey flinging ****.

He doesn't literally mean every fight and I don't really care about that. But he answered in hyperbole and I'm answering hyperbole by similar measure.

Originally Posted by Estarlio

Originally Posted by Moldy

Every real fight ever in the history of the universe has used punches.

Exclusively? That's a rather incredible claim.

Sigh. You completely missed my point. Moldy never wrote that people used punching exclusively in fights. He said that punching has been used in every fight, ever. Those are two entirely different statements, subtext or no.

You can write me off as whatever you want, I'm writing you off as someone who doesn't understand the meaning of the word exclusively.